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I'm currently on the Voyager -- docked in Athens with very few people on board. Those in the computer room appear to be busily working away on something. The computer is slower than when there are 700 passengers on board. Does downloading photographs and documents cause the system to slow down to a snails pace? Just curious. The answer to this question could be helpful to many people. Thanks much.

The entire system would likely not be too impacted if fellow passengers were downloading documents or photographs. Only an individual user would be impacted if they themselves are downloading items such as those with others not impacted.

Possible causes could be satellite interference which some times happens in ports and I remember that Athens could be one of them, or the ship itself downloading a major application or either a problem that the provider of the satellite link is having or possibly a ship equipment issue.

Might be good to ask someone from the ship if the know what the cause might be.

A data link is like a freeway. The more traffic you place on it, the slower all of the traffic must flow. The ship has two data links. Both connect to satellites. The main connection uses the C band. The backup connection uses the Ku band. Any satellite link is inherently slow due to the look angle, latency, and bit error rates. Access to these links is controlled by the configuration of the connecting equipment. Often the passenger's share of the link will be reduced when the ships has traffic coming in that has to be received. The shares can be altered at anytime.

Thank you for the responses. I suspect it had to do with Athens. We are at sea now and everything is fine. Although I love Keith's photos on the Crystal board (actually, we enjoy everything you post). I rarely post pictures while onboard. I was trying to take the opportunity to post menus this morning and the system was slower than slow.

newlondon: Trying to figure out your post. Thank you for letting me know about the Silversea question/comment? Will check to see where it is.

I'm currently on the Voyager -- docked in Athens with very few people on board. Those in the computer room appear to be busily working away on something. The computer is slower than when there are 700 passengers on board. Does downloading photographs and documents cause the system to slow down to a snails pace? Just curious. The answer to this question could be helpful to many people. Thanks much.

Assuming that you are working off the satellite, then yes, a single user could be downloading something or performing maintenance that could essentially bring the system to a stop.

TC2, in the original post you mentioned downloading, but from your second post, it sound like you mean uploading. (Downloading and uploading speeds can be very different, but chances are if one is crappy so will be the other.) Anyway, I have an easy tip about uploading photos.

The temptation is to upload them as they came off your camera, but what you should do is make a copy of the original then resize the copy to 640x480 which will upload faster and is still a nice image for web posting. Replace it with the original when you get home.

There are a lot of other ways to compensate for slow service, but I'll keep it simple for now since uploading photos was your immediate problem.

We've signed up for the Mariner Venice to Istanbul for April, 2013 and were wondering how you've found AThens -demonstrators in the city or ? Have any excursions been cancelled? Is the ship full? We were on the Mariner Lima to Buenos Aires this Jan-Feb and found the internet to be pretty fast compared to other years.

We've signed up for the Mariner Venice to Istanbul for April, 2013 and were wondering how you've found AThens -demonstrators in the city or ? Have any excursions been cancelled? Is the ship full? We were on the Mariner Lima to Buenos Aires this Jan-Feb and found the internet to be pretty fast compared to other years.

Hope you're having a wonderful time!!

When we were in Athens 2 weeks ago (approx.), there were no demonstrations or cancellations of excursions. The problems going on in Athens continue -- it is difficult to tell in advance when they will protest (although sometimes they do give notice). I know that the Voyager has been running full in that area an suspect the same is true on the Mariner as Regent has had some enticing offers to fill the ships.

In terms of internet speed, apparently the further north you go, the more difficult it can be to get a connection (someone mentionedthat on another thread). I know that the officers use Skype --[ not sure if that is during the day when we are in port, but that was the slowest time.